Various methods currently exist to teach musical notation: written, computerized, audio or video. The disadvantage of computer, audio or video methods is that they require suitable electronic equipment. The major disadvantage of the written method, which is often cumbersome, is that it is confined to the rudiments of musical theory and that a teacher is needed to guide the student further. Devices also exist to learn an instrument, such as those presented in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,841,192 and 3,842,708 which only refer to the piano and indicate the notes that each hand must play for predefined chords. As these devices only provide a small number of chords and only apply to a single instrument, they offer no significant progress over the methods that they aim to replace or complete. U.S. Pat. No. 4,074,607 outlines a process designed to simplify analysis of chords and musical notation according to a device based on progression by fifths which, far from simplifying musical theory, requires a thorough knowledge of musical notation to understand how it works.
This invention is aimed at everyone, including beginners, interested in learning musical notation and in playing a diatonic, monotonic or polyphonic instrument.
This invention consists in a device to compose, decompose, retranspose and retranscribe all musical chords and scales. It gives the intervals of a chosen note along with the qualifications and degrees of all other notes as well as the scales that can be played with the chosen note. The device comprises two superimposed disks of different diameters, joined at their centre by a pin enabling the disks to rotate independently.